It

was uncharacteristically flustered. He actually felt a blush rising in his cheeks. He had made the offer in a perfectly natural way, just as he had made it to Ben . . . except hadn’t he said something to Ben about owesies? Yes. But he hadn’t said anything about owesies to Beverly.
Richie suddenly felt a bit weird. He had dropped his eyes, retreating from her amused glance, and realized now that her skirt had ridden up a bit when she shifted forward to drop the ice-cream cone in the litter barrel, and he could see her knees. He raised his eyes but that was no help; now he was looking at the beginning swells of her bosoms.
Richie, as he usually did in such moments of confusion, took refuge in absurdity.
‘Yes! A date!’ he screamed, throwing himself on his knees before her and holding his clasped hands up. ‘Please come! Please come! I shall ruddy kill meself if you say no, ay-wot? Wot-wot?’
‘Oh, Richie, you’re such a fuzzbrain,’ she said, giggling again . . . but weren’t her cheeks also a trifle flushed? If so, it made her look prettier than ever. ‘Get up before you get arrested.’
He got up an d plopped down beside her again. He felt as if his equilibrium had returned. A little foolishness always helped when you had a dizzy spell, he believed. ‘You wanna go?’
‘Sure,’ she said. Thank you very much. Think of it! My first date. Just wait until I write it in my diary tonight.’ She clasped her hands together between her budding breasts, fluttered her eyelashes rapidly, and then laughed.
‘I wish you’d stop calling it that,’ Richie said.
She sighed. ‘You don’t have much romance in your soul.’
‘Damn right I don’t.’
But he felt somehow delighted with himself. The world seemed suddenly very clear to him, and very friendly. He found himself glancing sideways at her from time to time. She was looking in the shop windows — at the dresses and nightgowns in Cornell-Hopley’s, at the towels and pots in the window of the Discount Barn, and he stole glances at her hair, the line of her jaw. He observed the way her bare arms came out of the round holes of her blouse. He
saw the edge of her slip strap. All of these things delighted him. He could not have said why, but what had happened in George Denbrough’s bedroom had never seemed more distant to him than it did right then. It was time to go, time to meet Ben, but he would sit here just a moment lo nger while her eyes window –shopped, because it was good to look at her, and be with her.
9
Kids were ponying up their quarter admissions at the Aladdin’s box– office window and going into the lobby. Looking through the bank of glass doors, Richie could se e a crowd around the candy counter. The popcorn machine was in overdrive, spilling out drifts of the stuff, its greasy hinged lid jittering up and down. He didn’t see Ben anywhere. He asked Beverly if she had spotted him. She shook her head.
‘Maybe he already went in.’
‘He said he didn’t have any money. And the Daughter of Frankenstein there would never let him in without a ticket.’ Richie cocked a thumb at Mrs Cole, who had been the ticket-taker at the Aladdin since a time well before the pictures had begun to talk. Her hair, dyed a bright red, was so thin you could see her scalp beneath. She had enormous hanging lips which she painted with plum-colored lipstick. Wild blotches of rouge covered her cheeks. Her eyebrows were drawn on in black pencil. Mrs Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.
‘Boy, I don’t wanna go in without him but the show’s gonna start,’ Richie said. ‘Where in heck is he?’
‘You can buy him a ticket and leave it at the box-office,’ Bev said, reasonably enough. ‘Then when he comes — ‘
But just then Ben came around the corner of Center and Macklin Streets. He was puffing, and his belly joggled beneath his sweatshirt. He saw Richie and raised one hand to wave. Then he saw Bev and his hand stopped in mid-flap. His eyes widened momentarily. He finished his wave and then walked slowly to where they stood under the Aladdin’s marquee.
‘Hi, Richie,’ he said, and then looked at Bev briefly. It was as if he was afraid that an overlong look might result in a fla sh burn. ‘Hi, Bev.’
‘Hello, Ben,’ she said, and a strange silence fell between the two of them — it was not precisely awkward; it was, Richie thought, almost powerful. And he felt a vague twinge of jealousy, because something had passed between them and whatever it had been, he had been excluded from it.
‘Howdy, Haystack!’ he said. Thought you went chicken on me. These movies goan scare ten pounds off your pudgy body. Ah say, Ah say, they goan turn your hair white, boy. When you come out of this theater, you goan need an usher to help you up the aisle, you goan be shakin so bad.’
Richie started for the box-office and